Screen Queen: Golda Rosheuvel is ready to claim her throne
Up until quite recently you might not have heard of Golda Rosheuvel, the Guyanese-born British actress who has won the attention of audiences around the world for her scene-stealing turn as Queen Charlotte on Netflix’s period drama “Bridgerton”.
We first meet Rosheuvel’s acerbic and charming Queen Charlotte in all her splendour less than ten minutes into the series as she observes debutantes who will be introduced to the society. She sits atop her throne, bored by the endless parade. It is with the entrance of Daphne Bridgerton, the romantic heroine of the season, that the Queen deigns to rise from her perch. With an intentional strut she walks over to Daphne, lifts her chin with a finger and utters a single line that will reverberate through the rest of the series, “Flawless, my dear.”
It’s important that Rosheuvel immediately commands our attention and respect. As much as Phoebe Dynevor must charm as the naïve Daphne, for the central arc of the series to work – that Daphne is worth of our attention, the surety of Queen Charlotte’s pronouncement depends on Rosheuvel charismatic imperiousness in the role. There’s not a single note of falsity in her cadence. If she says that this is flawless, then it must be so.
It’s sharp and vivid work. Queen Charlotte exists on the periphery of the “Bridgerton” world – except that she looms over everything. She’s always being talked about. An object of worry. Of doubt. And of concern. There’s a Shakespearean element to it – the monarch who briefly appears, but whose very appearance creates immediate forebodings of importance. On the big and small screen, British entertainment has been preoccupied with its Queens. That Golda Rushevel – a biracial, immigrant – is stepping into the lineage of portrayals of Queens seems seismic.
Still, she insists that Bridgerton’s Queen Charlotte almost seems to exist outside of the history in some ways that she, initially, was not even thinking of her portrayal in relation to the long lines of British thespians that define their careers by playing a famous monarch. “I mean presume there’s a lot of difference between the real Queen Charlotte and the Queen Charlotte in “Bridgerton,” she laughs in our interview. “But, then I think of all the great people that have played versions of these Queens – some great actresses – and if anyone wants to put me in there with them, I’m very happy to be put into that basket.”
When the show premiered on Christmas Day in 2020, no one could have predicted that it would enter the zeitgeist of popular culture within days. It is an adaptation of the series of books by Julia Quinn, romantic novels covering various members of the Bridgerton family, who face the trials and tribulations of romance in Regency England.
The period drama has been described as the show that brought sexiness back to the Regency, as a Jane Austenesque romp by way of “Gossip Girl”, or a period version of the personal drama of something like “Grey’s Anatomy,” with lab-coats traded for corsets and petticoats. The “Grey’s Anatomy” comparison is not accidental. “Bridgerton,” though created by Chris Van Dusen, is produced by “Grey’s” creator Shonda Rhimes. For many, despite its period setting, the antics of the characters fit into the usual tones of Rhimes’ shows – not just in content, but in form. One of the more significant aspects of the show has been its departure from familiar presentations of 19th century England as lilywhite.
In “Bridgerton”, the main cast is a mix of black and white characters and Queen Charlotte is presented as a Black woman. Queen Charlotte’s race has been the subject of much historical research. Some theories insist she was descended from a Black branch of the Portuguese Royal family that moved to Germany. In talking of her preparation for the role, and the way the historical theory informed her playing, Rushevel says, “I didn’t think too much about the historical theory as much. Of course I did some research and I knew about Queen Charlotte, about the controversy of her being, possibly being black and the discussions around that. But “Bridgerton” is so very much its own world so that Queen Charlotte has to be the Queen Charlotte of Bridgerton, of that world.”
And in the world of “Bridgerton”, Queen Charlotte is incredibly important. We are told, via flashbacks with other characters, King George III is so enamoured with his new Black wife that their marriage shifts the axis of England, creating an imagined Britain where black persons coexist as members of the gentry. Even as it’s dominated by the central romance with a winsome debutante and a dashing duke, the show has its eyes on more than the central couple. And the watchful, suspicious Queen Charlotte is one of the key supporting players who define the series.
‘Love from both sides’
In 2018, Rosheuvel got a chance to audition for a role in a soon-to-be-produced Netflix show that would become “Bridgeton”. She was coming off a great year. She’d played a lesbian Othello in Liverpool to critical acclaim. It seemed like her career was on the upswing when she auditioned for the role of the maternal Lady Danbury. She did not get it.
“It did go to the magnificent Adjoa [Ando] who is a dear, dear friend,” she says with a laugh. But a few days later Rosheuvel was asked to send a few tapes for Queen Charlotte. “They sent me a few
sides to do. And they were like, could you send us a little tape for Queen Charlotte? So I did them, in like an hour or even half an hour and thought nothing of it really. I sent them off.” A few weeks into 2019, she received the call. “Bridgerton” had found its Queen Charlotte.
“It was one of the easiest castings I’ve ever had,” she says. And the actual process of the job has been just as rewarding. Her theatrical background informs her acting. “There’s a certain kind of grounding and gravitas and empathy that your theatre training teaches you that helps you when you’re on a screen.”
Rosheuvel is one of many stage actors on the series, and part of a larger trend of British thespians on film and TV being performers with significant stage roots. For her, theatre remains central. “I love it, and I know I will go back.” But she admits, “I like the quickness of TV and film. I like the way that the excitement of a TV set challenges me. Once a director says it’s done, it’s done. And you have to trust. So I find that it challenges my ego. And I like that.”
As much as the boundaries of acting between the stage and the screen blur, there are key differences in the ways that audiences respond to them. The storm-ina-teacup about the ways that the black characters in “Bridgerton” interrupted the ‘authenticity’ of the show has been constant since the premiere. And yet, as Rosheuvel points out, the reaction wouldn’t have been the same if “Bridgerton” was a stage production. And it’s true. The theatre has played around with casting actors across boundaries of race, sex and gender, so much so that blind-casting has become part of the norm. But on the screen, the desire for verisimilitude overwhelms. Even in something as deliberately fanciful as “Bridgerton,” the cries for ‘historical accuracy’ emerge.
“One thing I find from my own experiences as an actor is that my friends and family would come to see me act on stage and they’d say, you were great or you did that well. But when they watch me on TV or a movie, I’m not Golda. I am now that character.” Beyond the different ways audiences react to the mediums, Rosheuvel acknowledges the ways the lack of Black representation on screen, especially in British media, makes non-Black audiences resist stories that centre blackness.
She credits “Bridgerton” with giving her a chance to play someone from her mother’s historical background. Her career has been informed by playing black characters, but with “Bridgerton” she feels as if she’s tapping into a side of her mother’s British heritage that a more ‘realistic’ presentation of the world would have prevented.
“Even though I’m biracial, casting sees me one way. They see me as black. So I’ve never been able to represent any role that celebrates my mother’s heritage.” Her mother passed away last March, and for Rosheuvel playing Queen Charlotte has made her feel closer to her.
“I am being candid here. There was a time when my mental health struggled with identity. I went through periods of wondering whether I was black enough. And I realised I needed
to find out who Golda Rosheuvel was. And what that meant. And so I realised that I had to take the things I love from both sides to make the whole.” With “Bridgerton” it feels like both sides of that whole are on display.
She does not worry about the pushback on the diverse casting practices, but instead thinks of it as the beginning of necessary shifts in representation in the media. “Look, racism is learned. And if it’s learned, I think it can be unlearned. And I think storytelling can help with that unlearning.”
‘Guyanese roots’
Golda Rosheuvel’s own story began here. In the 1960s, her father, Siegfried Rosheuvel, a Guyanese priest, was in Barbados for a music event. While there he met the daughter of the then Bishop of Barbados, Judith Evans. The couple courted for a bit and by the late sixties they were in Guyana where Siegfried performed his missionary work.
They were married in Bartica, where Siegfried’s parents lived. They then moved to Skeldon, where Siegfried was assistant priest at a local church, while Judith taught in a school. They then
moved to Enmore. Then to Mahaica where Siegried father worked with the lepers at the Leper Colony. Then to Anna Regina in Essequibo. It was a life of much travel.
Rosheuvel recounts all of this information with the air of someone who has learned and grasped the history of her family. Her father’s missionary lifestyle demanded that they move around a lot, and it didn’t stop with her birth in 1970. “My mom would tell me stories of my dad going with her, and me there as a babe on my mom’s back and we’d be going into the bush for like two weeks with the tribes and administer holy communion for the indigenous people. And there’d be a baptism or a marriage that had been timed around his visits.”
In 1975, the family moved to the UK where she has lived ever since. But she’s retained that connection with her Guyanese roots. “We’d have our pepperpot. Our garlic pork, at Christmas. I still have my cook-up rice, my chicken-curry. And then we’d have our afternoon teas, with the scones with our clotted cream and jam.”
For her, her life’s story has always been about that happy medium between her two cultures. Rosheuvel hopes her mixture of identities, biracial lesbian thespian, can be a symbol of encouragement for those in Guyana. She’s keenly aware of what her career can represent for local Guyanese in and out of the creative industries. “I am happy to be here to celebrate the artists, to celebrate the LGBT community in Guyana. With my story, it becomes possible to walk the road you want to walk. It becomes possible to tread in my footsteps. It becomes possible to dream.”
Despite her success, Rosheuvel admits that she didn’t always intend to be an actress. For much of her teenage life she had her heart set on being a professional athlete. In secondary-school she was training for the Olympics. She did the 100m sprint, javelin, and the long-jump. “I was going to be a decathlon kind of athlete,” she says. “Like, I was singing and dancing and acting in school plays, but my focus was to be an athlete.” The plans were stymied when an accident with her ankle made her miss out on months of training. She turned her focus to performance. “In a way makes sense,” she points out. “Music and performance has always been a big part of my life growing up. My parents met while singing together in a choir in Barbados, for example.” And music defined much of the early part of her career, the acting came later.
After secondary school, she went on to study for a diploma in performance at the then East Herts College and then to studying musical theatre at the London Studio Centre. Her first job out of college was playing Donna in a touring production of “Hair”. She laughs as she reminisces, “Oh it was great. We toured all around Europe with that show. We got into so much trouble, seeing new places and new people.” Her West End debut came a few years later, playing a swing in “Porgy & Bess”, performing cover for eight people.
She’s been acting steadily since then with a few droughts in between. She smiles wryly as she shares a bit of irony. “One of those periods of droughts was in 2012, when the Olympics were in London,” she laughs. “I remember watching it and thinking that could have been me.”
“Do you miss it, sometimes?”
She thinks for a second and then responds, “I do. Sometimes. I do.”
With “Bridgerton” entering into production of its second season later this year, she is looking forward to hopefully digging more into the life of the show’s mercurial monarch. There’s a lot more of Golda Rosheuvel for the world to see. But for all the success of the show, she’s not finished with theatre. When asked if there was any role on the stage that she’d be excited to do, she thinks for the briefest of moments before she replies, “There’s a couple that come to mind, but the first one is that I’d really love to do Stephen Sondheim’s “Passion” and play Fosca.” It’s a surprising answer. Of the great Sondheim musicals, the inscrutable Fosca – a sickly woman in a toxic, mostly unrequited romance with a playboy soldier – does not immediately scream ‘role of a lifetime’. And yet the choice is instructive in illuminating the unpredictability of Rushevel, who seems as if she’s at the turning point of what should become a long and fruitful career.